The Fool’s Journey – Persona 5 Characters – Part 3

In the Persona series, the protagonist’s relationships with party members and important NPCs appear in the form of Arcanas, represented as Tarot cards, with the protagonist often taking the Fool card, number 0 in the Tarot. This is the wild card, representing innocence, creativity and inexperience.

A way to understand the Tarot is the Fool’s Journey, which takes you from Zero to the last card, from the Fool to The World, in a narrative about that card’s journey to find itself and overcome its own weaknesses. In Persona 5, you even hear this explanation and how each confidant, each NPC holding an Arcana, contributes to the protagonist’s personal Journey.

So let’s talk about those characters and what I think about them. Note: Below you’ll find minor spoilers on character story arcs. You have been warned. Continue reading The Fool’s Journey – Persona 5 Characters – Part 3

The Fool’s Journey – Persona 5 Characters – Part 2

 

In the Persona series, the protagonist’s relationships with party members and important NPCs appear in the form of Arcanas, represented as Tarot cards, with the protagonist often taking the Fool card, number 0 in the Tarot. This is the wild card, representing innocence, creativity and inexperience.

A way to understand the Tarot is the Fool’s Journey, which takes you from Zero to the last card, from the Fool to The World, in a narrative about that card’s journey to find itself and overcome its own weaknesses. In Persona 5, you even hear this explanation and how each confidant, each NPC holding an Arcana, contributes to the protagonist’s personal Journey.

On Wednesday, I spoke of the first seven Persona 5 characters, let’s do another seven today! Note: Below you’ll find minor spoilers on character story arcs. You have been warned. Continue reading The Fool’s Journey – Persona 5 Characters – Part 2

The Fool’s Journey – Persona 5 Characters – Part 1

I’ve been playing Persona 5 for weeks now, and I’m finally getting close to the end, as I’m just a few rooms away from the final boss and the true ending. I’m even considering streaming the last battle, if only to spite the abusive bastards at Atlus, who have the gall of trying to set limits on the game’s broadcasting and recording and even block out PlayStation 4 features.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today.

In the Persona series, the protagonist’s relationships with party members and important NPCs appear in the form of Arcanas, represented as Tarot cards, with the protagonist often taking the Fool card, number 0 in the Tarot. This is the wild card, representing innocence, creativity and also inexperience.

A way to understand the Tarot is the Fool’s Journey, which takes you from Zero to the last card, from the Fool to The World, in a narrative about that card’s journey to find itself and overcome its own weaknesses. In Persona 5, you even hear this explanation and how each confidant, each NPC holding an Arcana, contributes to the protagonist’s personal Journey.

So let’s talk about those characters and what I think about them. Note: Below you’ll find spoilers on character story arcs. You have been warned. Continue reading The Fool’s Journey – Persona 5 Characters – Part 1

Playing Persona 5 – Design Flaws

I like Persona 5 and in fact, before the game’s release, I was desperate to play a title in the series. I had read about it, seen gameplay and even the series and films spun from its predecessors, particularly Persona 3 and 4.

Persona 5’s greatest strength lies in its characters and the story it tells. Sure, there are issues in characterisation and storytelling, but overall, this part of the experience is the strongest and has some seriously phenomenal moments.

Continue reading Playing Persona 5 – Design Flaws

Online Profile Management – When is it too much?

Between Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook—and Google+ huddled alone in a corner—it’s almost unheard of for people not to have some form of online presence. The internet connects us all in one way or another and one thing I’ve always wondered about and which a recent situation brought to my mind is how far some people go to control how others perceive that online persona.

Here’s the situation. An acquaintance recently made his début as a speaker in a technical conference and to get there he studied, bought books on the subject of public speaking and nailed the presentation to be honest. But on the way, the organisers of the event shared his personal twitter— without his permission, which I consider a bit of a no-no, always ask!

Continue reading Online Profile Management – When is it too much?

Top Five Bad Tropes in JRPGs

Yesterday I spoke of the best things in Japanese Role-Playing Games aka JRPGs. I spoke of the scale, the length of the video games and how complex they are no matter their audience. But not everything about JRPGs is good and there are some common elements that annoy me to no end, so this time around I’m listing the five things I wish JRPGs stopped doing! Continue reading Top Five Bad Tropes in JRPGs

Five things I love about JRPGs

A couple of days I go wrote about the common elements in RPGs that I wasn’t really fond of, and JRPGs—that is Japanese RPGs—popped up a few times, both for good and bad reasons. Some people disagreed with my statements and we had a lovely discussion about it, but I realised today that no one argued the JRPG points.

So in contrast to the, mostly negative, overview of RPGs I gave on that article, I thought maybe we should take a closer look at JRPGs. What are its virtues and vices? If the phrasing seems familiar, then you probably read a similar article I did on adventure games some time ago. If you haven’t, go check it out, it’s a good one.

For today, I’m focusing on the positive aspects, the virtues of JRPGs. And to keep the list succinct, I’ll just explore the five things I like the most about JRPGs. Tomorrow, I’ll speak about the five I dislike the most! Continue reading Five things I love about JRPGs